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kovidgoyal: It appears you're not understanding what the Librarian of Congress rulings mean for the DMCA: every three years he decides on a list of exemptions to the DMCA, in other words his rulings override the specific relevant aspects of the DMCA. Once again here's the exact wording of his exemption:
"Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format."
I am interpreting the phrase "of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format" as pertaining to the Kindle, Sony Reader, iBook reader, etc, which is precisely what these readers do.
This is the same kind of ruling the Librarian of Congress has made with the jailbreaking of phones, and already the media has fully assumed the implications of this as pertaining to the availability of jailbreaking software as well.
Now, Apple and other companies can no longer threaten jailbreaking software providers, since jailbreaking is no longer prohibited by the DMCA.
Ditto for ebook formats. One can now claim that DRM is still legal under the DMCA, but not the software that prohibits interoperability between readers.
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